Dr. Junqiang (“Jacob”) Dai, PI of the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience for Social Development Lab, is recruiting two to three Ph.D. students to start in Fall 2025. Apply if you are interested in using advanced neuroimaging techniques to investigate social development and social health. This opportunity is particularly a good fit for students interested in adolescent brain development, puberty, face processing and perception (e.g., biases, traits, emotion), decision making, social influences (e.g., peers), and health-related outcomes (e.g., risky behaviors, susceptibility, emotion-related diseases) using multi-methods (e.g., neuroimaging, behavior, survey, sociometric)
The lab is located within the Department of Psychology at Georgia State University – Atlanta, which strongly emphasizes graduate training in interdisciplinary research. Graduate students in the lab will have a chance to work closely with excellent scholars from neuroimaging genetics, computation science, and bioengineers at TReNDS (joint GSU, Georgia Tech, and Emory Translational Research in Neuroimaging and Data Science). Throughout the training, students will acquire interdisciplinary perspectives and computational neuroimaging skills (e.g., machine learning, multivariate, network connectivity) for their future careers.
Dr. Dai will be accepting students from Neuropsychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental, and Clinical Psychology (clinical neuropsychology concentration) areas in Psychology Department, and potentially the Neuroscience Institute. Candidates interested in this position are welcome to email Dr. Dai to explore their tailored training and application process.
You can find more info about PI’s research on the faulty profile here (https://psychology.gsu.edu/profile/junqiang-jacob-dai/). Ph.D program and application link is here: https://gradapply.gsu.edu/portal/app_manage_page
Again, feel free to email Dr. Dai directly at if you have any questions.
(Atlanta is a fun place to live, easy access to outdoor activities, and has a large neuroscience community that you can easily build your research network)